“Greetings from Earth” Image of male and female, representing the reality of humanity, as inscribed on plaques in Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecrafts, launched by NASA, 1972, 1973.

If you’re a reasonable person, you probably don’t mind engaging on a topic that involves the reality of things. Facts are within this realm. Observable truth, is, for example, that Boston is north of Washington. Of course, we must all agree on the definition of the word “North” in order to arrive at any agreement. And we must all agree on the relative locations of Washington and Boston. If everyone in the room were suddenly to challenge this fact, and say that Boston is south of Washington, you’d be taken aback.

When a fact is challenged loudly, it’s destabilizing because that takes us to a place of unreality. If we’re stuck in that realm long enough we can lose our compass, our anchor. And things start looking very surrealistic as we enter that Twilight Zone.

Exchanging opinions, beliefs and various dogmas are a different story. If you believe something very strongly, but it’s not part of the realm of universally observable fact, you should expect some skepticism when you express it publicly. UFOs fall into this category. And I would say transgenderism does as well. The problem is that transgender law is hellbent on challenging essential facts about human reality.

One observable fact about humanity — defined in science as well as biblically and in the plaque of the Pioneer spacecraft illustrated above – is that it comes in two kinds. Males and females are the same in all of their biological systems, except for the reproductive system. In that they are absolutely distinct. The question transgenderism raises for us is: Can a person who rejects the sex they were “assigned” at birth become the other sex because he or she believes it to be so? If you say the answer is “Yes,” then pray tell: what does that mean for our sense of reality?

It means some seismic things. If we no longer agree on the definition of terms “male” and “female” that has vast implications for everything else in the landscape. When the terms are corrupted, when the map is compromised, people easily become displaced and disoriented, without direction — which means ripe for manipulation. This changes the whole experience of being human, placing us in a trap of ambiguity as to who and what we are.

If that’s where transgenderism leads us, what does it bode for human relationships? And power and freedom?

The New Yorker piece I discussed yesterday — “What is a Woman?” — has gotten quite a bit of attention. I noticed in my news feed that even Rush Limbaugh picked up on it during his show yesterday. You can read the transcript here, in which Limbaugh talks about what he calls “The Feminazis vs. the Transgenders.” Limbaugh confessed little understanding. (And, boy, he sure doesn’t get it.) The transcript reveals that the caller was likely a transgender activist. He seemed to use quite a bit of humor and ingratiating wile to promote the trans agenda and steer Limbaugh’s listeners into dismissing the radical feminists. (Rush should give rad fems equal time.)

So, what is the agenda of the transgender activists? On the surface, it’s supposed to be about non-discrimination. About allowing people to present to society whichever gender they say they are, and not suffer any negative consequences in employment, housing, business, or anything. But the underlying premise of transgender rights is that our sex is “assigned” to us at birth. This is key to understanding how it affects each and every one of us in law. The insidious term “assigned” has been sneaked into legislation as a given, and is not even up for debate. And so the trans agenda’s first order of business to shove their laws through and silence anyone who questions them. Which brings us to a thorn in their side — the rad fems.

What is the agenda of the Radical Feminists? Transgender activists have dubbed them: “Transgender Exclusionary Radical Feminists” and use the acronym “TERF” as a slur. (This is partly because rad fems believe women have a right to ban male-to-female transgenders from women-only facilities and venues, and refuse to use trans “preferred pronouns.”) Rad fems argue that being born male is a privilege and any man carries that privilege with him even if he “transitions” to female. The act of transitioning only accentuates gender, and perpetuates and promotes a patriarchal society, according to rad fems.

I will add one more important thing about the radical feminists. In my view, they’re doing a great service by lending their voice against the transgender push to transition and sterilize children based on a child’s perceived “gender identity dysphoria.” We all should be glad and grateful that they are speaking out against this barbaric practice.

The transgender route to power is strewn with evasion, deception, and dysfunction. It uses a lot of strong arm tactics (which we might even call patriarchal) of silencing all opponents, especially a vocal minority who stands for a much purer version of their purported agenda of equality. The trans agenda also has a lot of influence and huge sums of money behind its agenda, including the full support of the Obama Administration. Trans activists have pushed very hard through their window of opportunity which remains open only so long as enough people stay ignorant of their real aim: which is to redefine the humanity of us all.

“What is a Woman?” is the title of a very recent feature about transgenderism in New Yorker Magazine. It focuses on a bitter debate going on between transgender activists and radical feminists. The trans activists would have you believe that being a woman is something you can define for yourself. They’d say a man is a woman if he believes himself to be so. “Not so!” retort the radical feminists who reject that idea pretty much as just another example — quirky but more insidious than ever — of male chauvinism. The latter call themselves “rad fems” and seem to be a remnant of the feminism of the 60’s. Rank and file feminists of today have marginalized and abandoned them, choosing to fall in line with the trans agenda.

If you have the chance to read the New Yorker piece at the link above, you’ll want to ask yourselves these questions: What do the trans activists want? What do the rad fems want? What exactly is going on here? And what has it got to do with me? On the last point I would say it has everything to do with you. This is not a debate we can chuckle about on the sidelines. For those not tuned into the gender wars, this may seem amusing.

But I personally see nothing amusing about it. There’s something seismic going on beneath the surface and we ought to be very aware of it. What is really at stake here is not merely a matter of defining what a woman is. There is a hidden and much bigger question at stake: “What is a Human?” And that’s the question the trans agenda really intends to settle for each and every one of us. It’s intended to define all of us and all of our personal relationships.